Chapter III

To the list of things that the Belgians in Crashie Howe do not understand, along with oatmeal, honey in the comb, and tapioca, must now be added the Scottish climate. They do not complain, but they are puzzled, and after sixty-five consecutive hours of rain they wonder wistfully if it is always like this. We simply dare not tell them the truth.

By every post we are busy hunting for lost relatives who are scattered before the shattering fist of the KAISER over Great Britain, Belgium, Holland and France. We have not been very successful so far, but one or two we have found, at points as far apart as York and Milford Haven, and, best of all, we have unearthed a great-grandmother, last seen in an open coal boat off Ostend, who is now in comfortable quarters in a village in Ayrshire.

Our language difficulties have not been assisted by the arrival of a family from Antwerp who talk nothing but Walloon, but, on the other hand, the progress of the children is now beginning to afford certain frail lines of communication. The least of them, Élise, can already count up to twenty in English (with a strong Scoto-Flemish accent), and so it came about that when I took my little nieces round to pay calls, relations were at once established on a numerical basis.

"One, two, three," said Sheila, holding out her hand.

"Four," retorted Juliette, gurgling with delight.

"Five, six, seven," shouted Betty.

"Eight, nine?" enquired Juliette....

At the next cottage, where we were all rather shy, we began tentatively with "One?" But we finally gained so much confidence that by the time we reached our last visit we ran it up to ten at a single burst, and were consequently received with open arms.

One of our main concerns has been the Santa Claus question, and that is a matter which touches us closely, as we have among our number eleven children of Santa Claus age. There are a good many pitfalls here, and it is now unfortunately too late to warn other people of the chief of them. For the fact is--as we found to our amazement--that Santa Claus (you must, by the way, call him St. Nicholas; after all, it is his proper name) comes to Belgium and Russia, not on December 25th, but on December 6th. All our attempts to explain this phenomenon by the difference in the Russian calendar, though ingenious, have failed; it doesn't work out at all. Still, for some reason, that is how it is, and we cannot but be grateful to St. Nicholas for this delicate attention to our allies, by which no doubt they get the pick of the toys, even though we were nearly let in by him. Indeed Pierre had practically given up hope. He had told his mother that he was afraid St. Nicholas would never find his way to Scotland, it was too far.

Then there is another thing which might easily have been overlooked. It's no use putting out stockings, as we prefer to do in our insular way; one must put out _shoes_. At first sight it looks as if we in this country have the pull over our allies here, for one pair of little shoes does not hold much stuff. But fortunately it is the happy custom in all lands to allow of overflow to any extent. And finally St. Nicholas never comes down the chimney; he pops in through the window (which should be left slightly open at the bottom so that he can get in his thumb and prize it up). Also he never drove a reindeer in his life. He rides a horse. And this is of the first importance, for the one condition attaching to his benevolence is that you must put out a good wisp of hay for the horse, along with your shoes, or else he will simply pass on and you will get nothing at all.

Having collected and considered all these facts we were fully prepared to meet the situation--even down to the small gingerbread animals which always grace the day--on December 6th, and to deal faithfully with the little rows of clogs, bulging with hay, which awaited us on St. Nicholas Eve.

* * * * *

Illustration: _Weary Variety Agent._ "AND WHAT'S _YOUR_ PARTICULAR CLAIM TO ORIGINALITY?"

_Artiste._ "I'M THE ONLY COMEDIAN WHO HAS SO FAR REFRAINED FROM ADDRESSING THE ORCHESTRA AS 'YOU IN THE TRENCH.'"

* * * * *

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS, 1914.

"It's perfectly simple," said the Reverend Henry, adopting his lofty style. "We must cut the whole lot. There is no other course."

"I don't consider that your opinion is of any value whatever," said Eileen. "In fact you ought not to be allowed to take part in this discussion. Every one knows that you have always tried to get out of Christmas presents, and now you are merely using a grave national emergency to further your private ends."

The Reverend Henry was squashed; but Mrs. Sidney had a perfect right to speak, for she has been without doubt the most persistent and painstaking Christmas provider in the family, and has never been known to miss a single relation even at the longest range.

"I quite agree with Henry," said she. "This is no time for Christmas presents--except to hospitals and Belgians and men at the Front."

"You mean that you would scratch the whole lot," said I, "even the pocket diary for 1915 that I send to Uncle William?"

"Yes, even that. You can send the diary to Sidney" (who is in Flanders). "I have always wanted him to keep a diary."

"What about the children?" said I.

"The children must realise," said the Reverend Henry solemnly, "what it means for the nation to be at war."

"Oh, no," Laura broke in impetuously. "How can they realise? How can you expect Kathleen to realise?"

"Do you know," said the Reverend Henry, "that only last Sunday my niece Kathleen was marching all over the house singing at the top of her voice, 'It's a long, long way to Tipperary: the Bible tells me so?' Obviously she realises."

"But what about----" Eileen was beginning.

"Let's have a scrap of paper," said I, "a contract that we can all sign, and then we can put down the exceptions to the rule."

Henry was already hard at work with a sheet of foolscap.

"... not to exchange, give, receive or swap in celebration of Christmas, 1914, any gift, donation, subscription, contribution, grant, token or emblem within the family and its connections: and further not to permit any gift, donation, subscription, contribution, grant, token or emblem to emanate from any member of the family to such as are outside."

"Good so far," said I.

"The following recipients to be excepted," Henry went on,

"(1) All Hospitals; (2) Belgians; (3) His Majesty's Forces----"

"(4) The Poor and Needy," suggested Eileen.

"(5) The Aged and Infirm," said I. "I only want to get in Great-aunt Amelia. She mustn't be allowed to draw a blank."

"That's true," said Henry; "we'll fix the age limit at ninety-one. That'll bring her in."

"(6) Children of such tender age that they are unable to realise the national emergency," said Mrs. Sidney.

"Quite so," said Henry. "What would you suggest as the age limit? Three?"

"Four," said Laura simultaneously.

"I should like to suggest five," said I, "to bring in Kathleen."

"Let's make it seven," said Mrs. Henry. "I can hardly believe that Peter realises, you know."

"Stop a bit," said I. "If you take in Peter you can't possibly leave out Tom. Make it eight-and-a-half."

"That seems a little hard on Alice, doesn't it?" said Eileen.

"Any advance on eight-and-a-half?" called Henry from the writing-desk. And from that moment the discussion assumed the character of an auction, Laura finally running it up to thirteen (which brings in the twins) to the general satisfaction.

When the contract was signed, witnessed and posted on its way to the other signatories there was a general sense of relief that Christmas would not be very different from usual after all. Henry growled a good deal. But we know our Reverend Henry: he will do his duty when the time comes.

* * * * *

"The Prince of Wales noticed a private in his own regiment, the
Grenadier Guards, who is six feet inches in height. He is six feet
inches in height."--_Scotsman._

It sounds silly, but the writer evidently means it.

* * * * *

Illustration: THE RULING PASSION.

_Voice from below._ "FOR 'EAVEN'S SAKE, MUM, GET BACK. THE FIRE-ESCAPE WILL BE 'ERE IN FIVE MINUTES."

_Endangered Female._ "Five minutes? Then throw me back my knitting."

* * * * *

THE WILLOW-PATTERN PLATE.

A Philistine? Then you will smile
At this old willow-pattern plate
And junks of long-forgotten date
That anchor off Pagoda Isle;

At little pig-tailed simpering rakes
Who kiss their hands (three miles away)
To dainty beauties of Cathay
Beside those un-foreshortened lakes.

With hand on heart they smile and sue.
Their topsy-turvy world, you say,
Is out of all perspective? Nay,
'Tis we who look at life askew.

Dreams lose their spell; hard facts we prize
In our humdrum philosophy;
But, could we change, who would not be
A suitor for those azure eyes?

Who would not sail with fairy freight
Piloting some flat-bottomed barge--
A size too small, or else too large--
On this old willow-pattern plate?

* * * * *

"The 'Figaro' publishes a telegram from Petrograd which contradicts
the German announcement that Lodz is occupied by the
Kermans."--_Lancashire Evening Post._

And quite right too.

* * * * *

A MARNE FOOTNOTE.

There was a battlefield, I was told, with a ruined village near it, about as far from Paris as Sevenoaks is from London, and I decided to see it. The preliminaries, they said, would be difficult, but only patience was needed--patience and one's papers all in order. It would be necessary to go to the War Bureau, opposite the Invalides.

I went to the War Bureau opposite the Invalides one afternoon. I rang the bell and a smiling French soldier opened the door. Within were long passages and other smiling French soldiers in little knots guarding the approaches, all very bureaucratic. The head of the first knot referred me to the second knot; the head of the second referred me to a third. The head of this knot, which guarded the approach to the particular military mandarin whom I needed or thought I needed, smiled more than any of them, and, having heard my story, said that that was certainly the place to obtain leave. But it was unwise and even impossible to go by any other way than road, as the railway was needed for soldiers and munitions of war, and therefore I must bring my chauffeur with me, with his papers, which must be examined and passed.

My chauffeur? I possessed no such thing. Necessary then to provide myself with a chauffeur at once. Out I went in a fusillade of courtesies and sought a chauffeur. I visited a taxi rank and stopped this man and that, but all shied at the distance. At last one said that his garage would provide me with a car. So off to the garage we went, and there I had an interview with a manager, who declined to believe that permission for the expedition would be made at all, except possibly to oblige a person of great importance. Was I a person of great importance? he asked me. Was I? I wondered. No, I thought not. Very well then, he considered it best to drop the project.

I came away and hailed another taxi, driven by a shaggy grey hearthrug. I told him my difficulties, and he at once offered to drive me anywhere and made no bones about the distance whatever. So it was arranged that he should come for me on the morrow--say Tuesday, at a quarter to eleven, and we would then get through the preliminaries and my lunch comfortably by noon and be off and away. So do hearthrugs talk with foreigners--light-heartedly and confident. But Heaven disposes. For when we reached the Bureau at a minute after eleven the next morning the smiling janitor told us we were too late. Too late at eleven? Yes, the office in question was closed between eleven and two; we must return at two.

"But the day will be over," I said; "the light will have gone. Another day lost!" Nothing on earth can crystallize and solidify so swiftly and implacably as the French official face. At these words his smile vanished. He was not angry or threatening--merely granite. Those were the rules, and how could anyone question them? At two, he repeated: and again I left the building, this time not bowing quite so effusively, but suppressing a thousand criticisms which might have been spoken were not the French our allies.

Three hours to kill in a city where everything is shut. No Louvre, no Carnavalet! However, the time went, chiefly over lunch, and at two we were there again, the hearthrug and I, and were shown into a waiting-room where far too many other persons had already assembled. To me this congestion seemed deplorable; but the hearthrug merely grinned. It was all a new experience to him, and his meter was registering the time. We waited, I suppose, forty minutes and then came our turn, and we were led to a little room where sat a typical elderly French officer at a table. He had white moustaches and was in uniform with blue and red about it. I bowed, he bowed, the hearthrug grovelled. I explained my need, and he replied instantly that I had come to the wrong place; the right place was the Conciergerie.

Another rebuff! In England I might have told him that it was one of his own idiotic men who had told me otherwise, but of what use would that be in France? In France a thing is or is not, and there is no getting round it if it is not. French officials are portcullises, and they drop as suddenly and as effectively. Knowing this, so far from showing resentment or irritation, I bowed and made my thanks as though I had come for no other purpose than a dose of frustration; and again we left this cursed Bureau.

I re-entered the taxi, which, judging by the meter, I should very soon have completely paid for, and we hurtled away (for the hearthrug was a demon driver) to Paris's Scotland Yard. Here were more passages, more little rooms, more inflexible officials. I had bowed to half-a-dozen and explained my errand before at last the right one was reached, and him the hearthrug grovelled to again and called "Mon Colonel." He sat at a table in a little room, and beside him, all on the same side of the table, sat three civilians. On the wall behind was a map of France. What they did all day, I wondered, and how much they were paid for it; for we were the only clients, and the suggestion of the place was one of anecdotage and persiflage rather than toil. They acted with the utmost unanimity. First "Mon Colonel" scrutinised my passport, and then the others, in turn, scrutinised it. What did I want to go to ---- for? (The name is suppressed because it is two or three months since the battle was fought there.) I replied that my motive was pure curiosity. Did I know it was a very dull town? I wanted to see the battlefield. That would be _triste_ too. Yes, I knew, but I was interested. "Mon Colonel" shrugged and wrote on a piece of paper and passed the paper to the first civilian, who wrote something else and passed it on, and finally the last one got it and discovered a mistake in the second civilian's writing, and the mistake had to be initialled by all the lot, each making great play with a blotter; and at last the precious document was handed to me and I was really free to start. But it was now dark.

* * *

The road from ---- leaves the town by a hill, crosses a canal, and then mounts and winds, and mounts again, and dips and mounts, between fields of stubble, with circular straw-stacks as their only occupants. The first intimation of anything untoward, besides the want of life, was the spire of the little white village of ---- on the distant hill, which surely had been damaged. As one drew nearer it was clear that not only had the spire been damaged, but that the houses had been damaged too. The place seemed empty and under a ban.

I stopped the car outside, at the remains of a burned shed, and walked along the desolate main street. All the windows were broken; the walls were indented with little holes or perforated with big ones. The roofs were in ruins. Here was the post-office; it is now half demolished and boarded up. There was the inn; it is now empty and forlorn. Half the great clock face leant against a wall. Everyone had fled--it is a "deserted village" with a vengeance: nothing left but a few fowls. Everything was damaged; but the church had suffered most. Half of the shingled spire was destroyed, most of the roof, and the great bronze bell lay among the _débris_ on the ground. It is as though the enemy's policy was to intimidate the simple folk through the failure of their super-natural stronghold. "If the church is so pregnable, then what chance have we?"--that is the question which it was hoped would be asked; or so I imagined as I stood before this ruined sanctuary. Where, I wondered, are those villagers now, and what chances are there of the rebuilding of these old peaceful homes, so secure and placid only four months ago?

And then I walked to the battlefield a few hundred yards away, and only too distinguishable as such by the little cheap tricolors on the hastily-dug graves among the stubble and the ricks. Hitherto I had always associated these ricks with the art of Claude Monet, and seeing the one had recalled the other; but henceforward I shall think of those poor pathetic graves sprinkled among them, at all kinds of odd angles to each other--for evidently the holes were dug parallel with the bodies beside them--each with a little wooden cross hastily tacked together, and on some the remnants of the soldier's coat or cap, or even boots, and on some the blue, white and red. As far as one can distinguish, these little crosses break the view: some against the sky-line, for it is hilly about here, others against the dark soil.

It was a day of lucid November sunshine. The sky was blue and the air mild. A heavy dew lay on the earth. Not a sound could be heard; not a leaf fluttered. No sign of life. We were alone, save for the stubble and the ricks and the wooden crosses and the little flags. How near the dead seemed: nearer than in any cemetery.

Suddenly a distant booming sounded; then another and another. It was the guns at either Soissons or Rheims--the first thunder of man's hatred of man I had ever heard.

So I, too, non-combatant, as _Anno-Domini_ forces me to be, know something of war--a very little, it is true, but enough to make a difference when I read the letters from the trenches or meet a Belgian village refugee.

* * * * *

Illustration: _Pompous Lady._ "I SHALL DESCEND AT KNIGHTSBRIDGE."

_Tommy_ (_aside_). "TAKES 'ERSELF FOR A BLOOMIN' ZEPPELIN!"

* * * * *

"General Joffre then engaged in a short conversation with several
journalists, and when they referred to the military medal which M.
Poincaré pinned on his chest, he said: '3/8 All this counts for
nothing.'"

_Manchester Guardian._

But on the other 5/8 we offer our respectful congratulations.

* * * * *

THE PROPHETS.

I have a friend, a gloomy soul,
Who daily wails about the war,
Taking the line that, on the whole,
Our luck is rotten at the core,
And into each success
Reads some disaster, rather more than less.

Another friend I have, whose heart
Beats with "abashless" confidence,
Who sees the KAISER in the cart
And hung in chains "a fortnight hence";
He saw this months ago,
And some day hopes to say, "I told you so."

When Heraclitus brings a cloud,
Democritus provides the sun;
Or should the Hopeful crow too loud,
I listen to the Mournful One;
And thus, between the two,
I find a fairly rational point of view.

* * * * *

Faces We have no Use For.

"Once or twice he sighed a little, although he had an uninterrupted
view of a profile as regular as a canoe."--_New Magazine._

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"THE MAN WHO STAYED AT HOME."

No, he was not a shirker, as you thought. Nor was he engaged in making munitions of war, or khaki, or woollens, or military boots, or in exporting cocoa to the enemy _viâ_ neutral Holland--that roaring monopoly of the Pacificist. His business was to spy at spies--a task that called for as much coolness and courage as any job at the Front. And so when the officious flapper presented him with a white feather he had no use for it except as a pipe-cleaner.

For his purpose _Christopher Brent_ had taken up his residence at a "select boarding establishment" on the East Coast, which contained the following members of the German Secret Service: _Mrs. Sanderson_, proprietress; _Carl_, her son, clerk in the British Admiralty; _Fräulein Schroeder_, boarder, and _Fritz_, waiter. Their design, if I rightly penetrated its darkness, was to give information of the whereabouts of a certain section of the Expeditionary Force which was "coming through from the North"; to supply Berlin with plans of the coast defences; and finally to give a signal to a German submarine by the firing of the house, which would incidentally mean the roasting alive of its innocent contents. All this (for the sake of ARISTOTLE and the Unities) was to take place in a single day, though I for one could not believe that either the pigeon post or the ordinary mail would be equal to the strain.

Their utensils included a Marconi instrument concealed in the chimney; a bomb; a revolver; maps of the minefield and harbour; a carrier-pigeon, and a knife for disposing of the cliff-sentry.

To frustrate their schemes something more was needed than the wit of _Brent_ and his ally, the widow _Leigh_; something more, even, than his skill in shooting pigeons in flight with an air-rifle. The vacuum was supplied by the crass stupidity of the EMPEROR'S minions. Even when full credit is given to _Brent_ for letting his bath overflow so as to flood the public salon and render it untenable, it was surely unwise of _Mrs. Sanderson_ to offer her private parlour for the use of the boarders on the very day set apart for the execution of her plans which were centred in this room. It was also gross carelessness on the part of her son, when he had _Brent_, with hands up, at his mercy, to place his own revolver on the table and to use, in exchange, the unloaded weapon which he had taken from his opponent's pocket. It was puerile, too, to accept without proof the verbal assurances of the widow _Leigh_ that she was one of themselves, a loyal German spy. And _Fritz_ committed an unpardonable error in giving away the site of the Marconi apparatus by his undisguised suspicion of anybody who took any interest in the fireplace.

And so their schemes all went agley; the whole pack was arrested; and when the curtain fell on a happy group of boarders in midnight _déshabillé_ there was every promise that the misdemeanants would receive a month's imprisonment or at least a caution to be of good behaviour for the future.

Illustration:

"HANDS UP!"

"HANDS UP YOURSELF!"

_Carl Sanderson._ .. Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY. _Christopher Brent._ .. Mr. DENNIS EADIE.

I understand, on good authority, that the tendency of the public at this juncture of the War is to demand light refreshment. Well, they have it here. For, though the subject deals with a serious problem of the hour, it can be treated, and is treated, with a very permissible humour that just stops short of farce. Some of the stage-devices, as I am assured by my betters, may have a touch of antiquity, but their application is as modern as can well be, and I should indeed be ungrateful if after an entertainment so smoothly and dexterously administered I were to be captious about origins or other matters of pedantry.

Mr. DENNIS EADIE, as _Brent_, both in his real character of detective and in the assumed futility of his disguise as a genial idiot, was equally excellent, and again proved his gift for quick-change artistry. Miss MARY JERROLD'S _Fräulein Schroeder_ was extraordinarily Teutonic in all but her quiet humour, which she seemed to have caught from the country of her adoption. The _Fritz_ of Mr. HENRY EDWARDS was another delightful sketch, though his actual German birth and his allegation of Dutch nationality were both belied by the red Italian corpuscles with which the authors had inoculated him. Miss JEAN CADELL, as usual, played a pale and fatuous spinster, but this time, in the part of _Miss Myrtle_, she had her chance, and seized it bravely. When that typical British boarder, Mr. _John Preston, M. P._ (interpreted with great relish and vigour by Mr. HUBERT HARBEN), remarked, "I call a spade a spade," she replied, "And I suppose you would call a dinner-napkin a _serviette_"--one of the pleasantest remarks in a play where the good things said were many and unforced.

I have not mentioned the admirable performance--its merits might easily be missed--of Mr. STANLEY LOGAN as a Territorial Tommy; or the very natural manners of Mrs. ROBERT BROUGH as _Mrs. Sanderson_; or the quiet art of Miss RUTH MACKAY in a part (_Miriam Leigh_) that offered a too-limited scope to her exceptional talents. Miss ISOBEL ELSOM contributed her share of the rather perfunctory love-interest with a very pretty sincerity; and Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY, in the ungrateful part of the spy _Carl_, did his work soundly, with a lofty sacrifice of his own obvious good-nature. Indeed, it was a very excellent cast.

I should like to congratulate the authors, Messrs. LECHMERE WORRALL, and HAROLD TERRY, on having given the public what they want, without lapsing into banality. The attraction of the first two Acts was not, perhaps, fully sustained in the third, but they gave us quite a cheerful evening; and at the fall of the curtain the audience was so importunate in their applause that Mr. DENNIS EADIE had to break it to them that, though the loss of their company would give him pain, he thought the time had come for them to go away.

I did not notice Mr. REGINALD MCKENNA in the stalls, but it was a great night for him and the Home Office.

O. S.

* * * * *

Raison de Plus.

Says the sleek humanitarian: "Any sacrifice I'd make
For the voluntary system--up to going to the stake,"
Which inspires the obvious comment that contingencies like this
Turn the coming of conscription to unmitigated bliss.

* * * * *

"The remaining characters were taken by Mr. HERBERT LOMAS as Ever, a
splendid actor...."--_Manchester City News._

You should see Sir HERBERT TREE as Always.

* * * * *

Illustration: LANGUAGE-KULTUR.

_Voice from the darkness._ "DOAND SHOOD! DOAND SHOOD! VE VOS DE VILTSHIRES."

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

If _The Prussian Officer_, a study of morbidly vicious cruelty practised by a captain of Cavalry on his helpless orderly (and the first of a sheaf of collected stories, short or shortish, by Mr. D. H. LAWRENCE, issued by Messrs. DUCKWORTH), had been written since the declaration of war it would certainly be discounted as a product of the prevailing _odium bellicosum_. But it appeared well in the piping times of peace, and I remember it (as I remember others of the collection) with a freshness which only attaches to work that lifts itself out of the common ruck. An almost too poignant intensity of realism, expressed in a distinguished and fastidious idiom, characterises Mr. LAWRENCE'S method. It is a realism not of minutely recorded outward happenings, trivial or exciting, but of fiercely contested agonies of the spirit. None of those stories is a story in the accepted mode. They are studies in (dare one use the overworked word?) psychological portraiture. I don't know any other writer who realises passion and suffering with such objective _force_. The word "suffering" drops from his pen in curiously unexpected contexts. The fact of it seems to obsess him. Yet it is no morbid obsession. He seems to be dominated by sympathy in its literal meaning, and it gives his work a surprising richness of texture.... I dare press this book upon all such as need something more than mere yarns, who have an eye for admirably sincere workmanship and are interested in their fellows--fellows of all sorts, soldiers, keepers, travellers, clergymen, colliers, with womenfolk to match.

* * *

On a map of the North you may be able to find an island named after one _Margaret_. It should lie, though I have sought it in vain, just about where the florid details of the Norwegian coast-line run up to those blank spaces that are dotted over, it would seem, only by the occasional footprints of polar bears. Anyhow it was so christened by two bold mariners who lived in the _Spacious Days_ (MURRAY) of QUEEN ELIZABETH. That they both loved the lady (ELIZABETH, of course, too--but I mean _Margaret_) may be assumed; but that they should eventually, with one accord, desire to resign their claims upon her affection must be read to be understood. I for one did not quarrel with them on this score. For had not their mistress in the meantime found companionship more suitable than theirs? Besides, if even the author is so little courteous to his heroine as to invite her to appear only in two chapters between the third and the twenty-seventh, why should two rough sea-dogs--or you and I--be more attentive? And indeed it is a correct picture of his period that Mr. RALPH DURAND is concerned to present rather than a love story. In the writing of the love scenes considered necessary to the mechanism of the plot he seems very little at his ease; and so marked at times is his discomfort that I must confess to having felt some irritation when my willingness to be convinced was not met halfway. In the handling of his sheets and oars I like the author better, though even here I miss what might have brought me into a companionship with his people as close as I could wish on a most adventurous journey of nearly four hundred pages. But perhaps that is my fault; and, at the least, here is a straightforward sea story--as honest as the sea and as clean.

* * *

_Llanyglo_ was a child with fair hair and blue eyes, and how she grew and what she learnt, and all the changes of her dresses and her soul, are set forth by Mr. OLIVER ONIONS in _Mushroom Town_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). She differed from the children of other novelists who grow up to be men and women, because she was made of bricks and mortar and iron girders and romantic scenery and ozone (especially ozone), and the people who lived with her or took trips to see her are treated as a mere emblematical garnish of her character and growth. _Llanyglo_ is a daughter of Wales, but she is not any town that you may happen to have seen, although possibly Blackpool and Douglas and Llandudno have met her, and turned up their noses at her, as she turned up her nose at them. Lancashire built and conquered her, to be conquered and annually recuperated in turn. _Cymria capta ferum_ ... might have been the motto of her municipal arms. Exactly how Mr. ONIONS exhibits the romantic spectacle of her development, with the strange knowledge she picked up, as from virgin wildness she became first select and then popular, I cannot hope to explain. Suffice it to say that the process is epitomised in sketches of the various people who helped in the moulding of her--the drunken _Kerr_ brothers, who built a house in a single night; _Howell Gruffydd_, the wily grocer; _Dafydd Dafis_, the harper; and _John Willie Garden_, son of the shrewd cotton-spinner who first saw the possibilities of the place, and won the heart of the untamed gipsy girl, _Ynys_. This is surely Mr. ONIONS' best novel since _Good Boy Seldom_; and as _Llanyglo_ is safely ensconced on the West coast you should go there at once for the winter season.

* * *

_Spragge's Canyon_ (SMITH, ELDER), takes its title, as you might guess, from the canyon where the _Spragges_ lived. It was a delightful spot, a kind of earthly paradise (snakes included), and the _Spragge_ family had made it all themselves out of unclaimed land on the Californian coast. Wherefore the _Spragges_ loved it with a love only equalled perhaps by the same emotion in the breast of Mr. H. A. VACHELL, who has written a book about it. The _Spragges_ of the tale are _Mrs. Spragge_, widow of the pioneer, and her son _George_. With them on the ranch lived also a cousin, _Samantha_, a big-built capable young woman, destined by Providence and _Mrs. Spragge_ to be the helpmate of _George_. But _George_, though he was strong and handsome and a perfect marvel with rattlesnakes (which he collected as a subsidiary source of income), was also a bit of a fool; and when, on one of his rare townward excursions, he got talking to _Hazel Goodrich_ in a street car, her pale attractiveness and general lure proved too much for him. Accordingly _Hazel_ was asked down to the ranch on a visit (I am taking it on trust that Mr. VACHELL knows the Californian etiquette in these matters) and has the time of her life, flirting with the love-lorn _George_, impressing his mother, and generally scoring off poor _Samantha_. At least so she thought. Really, however, _Mrs. Spragge_ had taken _Hazel's_ measure in one, and was all the time quietly fighting her visitor for her son's future. This fight, and the character of the mother who makes it, are the best things in the book. I shall not tell you who wins. Personally I had expected a comedy climax, and was unprepared for creeps. But _George_, I may remind you, collected snakes. A good and virile tale.

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Sir MELVILLE MACNAGHTEN hopes, in his Introduction to _Days of my Years_ (Arnold), that his reminiscences "may be found of some interest to a patient reader"; and, when one considers that _Sir Melville_ spent twenty-four years at Scotland Yard, many of them as chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, he can hardly be accused of undue optimism. Speaking as one of his readers, I found no difficulty at all in being patient. I have always had a weakness for official detectives, and have resented the term "Scotland Yard bungler" almost as if it were a personal affront; and now I feel that my resentment is justified. Scotland Yard does not bungle; and the advice I shall give for the future to any eager-eyed, enthusiastic young murderer burning to embark on his professional career is, don't practise in London. I would not lightly steal a penny toy in the Metropolitan area. There are two hundred and seventy-nine pages in this story of crime, as seen by the man at the very centre of things, and nearly every one of them is packed with matter of absorbing interest. Consider the titles of the chapters: "Bombs and their Makers"; "Motiveless Murders"; "Half-a-day with the Blood-hounds." This, I submit, is the stuff; this, I contend, is the sort of thing you were looking for. There is something so human and simple in Sir MELVILLE'S method of narration that it is with an effort that one realises what an important person he really was, and what extraordinary ability he must have had to win and hold his high position. Even when he disparages blood-hounds I reluctantly submit to his superior knowledge and abandon one of my most cherished illusions. I hate to do it, but if he says that a blood-hound is no more use in tracking criminals than a Shetland pony would be, I must try to believe him.

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Illustration: THE COMPLETE SALESMAN.

_Lady_ (_rather difficult to please_). "I LIKE THIS ONE, BUT--I SEE IT'S PRINTED IN GERMANY."

_Salesman._ "WELL, IF YOU LIKE IT, MADAM, I WOULDN'T TAKE TOO MUCH NOTICE OF THAT STATEMENT. IT'S PROBABLY ONLY ANOTHER GERMAN LIE!"

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Revenge.

"After Herr Von Holman Bethwig's wild speech in the German Reichstag
the Government might change their minds."

_Cork Constitution._

It isn't much one can do to the GERMAN CHANCELLOR just now, but these misprints of his name always annoy him, and every little helps.

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